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SEO is probably the best way to directly increase your traffic and thus positively influence your online sales. There are many SEO elements that you need to take a look at when trying to optimize for organic search rankings, some of which include keyword research, quality, and quantity of your backlinks, updating content regularly, etc. However, there are also many technical aspects of SEO that you might be neglecting and which will also affect your rankings. This guide will take you through some of the best things you can do to improve your website’s crawlability, as well as how to increase organic traffic overall.

Direct Answer Queries Through HTML Tables

Many web users out there type in all sorts of questions (or something resembling questions) in their search boxes, and what they like to get in return is a direct answer once the search results pop out. And since the users love that, Google loves it even more! This means that Google will propel your website towards the top of the rankings if you provide clear and direct answers to frequently asked questions in your niche. It’s a quick and simple way to get lots of traffic. It goes without saying that you’ll also need to have your other SEO elements on point if you want this to really work, so keep that in mind.

Up the Word Count on Your Blog Pages

While word count isn’t that much of a big deal anymore in terms of SEO ranking, it can still be a factor if you manage to rank for an informative search query. To do this, you need a blog page with at least 2500 words of text but can also go up to 3000. Top-ranked searches have about 2400 words in average, which means you’ll have a better shot at those top spots if you go with more content. However, you should know that quality is still valued much more than quantity, so make sure you’re not just pumping-up the word count, but instead invest more time into creating these super articles.

Google Crawl Budget

You’re probably aware that Google bots regularly crawl existing and new pages around the web, which is how the search rankings are formed. Constant crawling means Google can assess the performances of websites and rank them accordingly. So what is Google Crawl Budget? It’s the number of pages Google bots will visit on your website during a single session. This number varies for different websites, as Google is clearly more interested to know about certain websites more than others. Improving your Google Crawl Budget will directly influence your search rankings. So here are some of the things you can do to improve your crawl budget.

Faster websites will have better crawl rates, so making your website load faster will influence it. It will also make sure that Google bots are crawling efficiently through your pages, which will improve your rankings.

Image optimization will make your pages faster, so will reducing your unnecessary JavaScript and CSS codes and minifying your HTML.

Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly (you can test your website here).

Improve User Experience

User experience (UX) has grown in importance over the years and today it’s absolutely vital for any website that is looking to rank well on Google. This means you’ll want your navigation to be top-notch, since most of your users will just abandon the website if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Meaningful, high quality content will also improve your UX, as well as the quality of your links. The more time your users spend on your pages, the better will Google perceive you (so if they are bouncing of your website a lot, you’ll suffer). Of course, page load times are absolutely crucial for UX, so you’ll always want to take a look at these when you’re trying to advance your SEO efforts.

Use a Lot of Internal Links

While it sounds simple, it’s not. But if you manage to do it, it’s one of the best ways to increase your traffic and SEO rankings. So here are some of the things that you can do to ensure your internal links are powerful enough.

You’ll need a lot of high-quality, meaningful content. This means you’ll need to create content with internal linking in mind. Something that you had no space to explain in one article, can be explained in length in another, with one article linking to another. The more quality content you have, the easier time you’ll have with internal linking.

Try to link to specific pages, instead of linking to a home page. You’ll also want multiple internal links leading to your important pages, since they will get ranked better because of this.

Contextual linking is much better than listing your sources at the bottom of the page.

Avoid unnatural links. These are the links that were made specifically for the purpose of internal linking and don’t benefit your users. Links like these will reduce your rankings since Google will perceive you as less reliable.

Getting a high-quality backlinks is a complicated process, which is why you might want to use a white hat link building techniques. It will be worth it in the long run since your traffic will directly influence your sales, and backlinks are still the one of the best way to achieve that.

Bottom Line

SEO has changed a lot over the years, especially with Google’s regular algorithm updates. This means it’s always an ongoing process, you’ll never be really done with it. It’s vital that you stay in touch with current SEO trends and adapt your strategy to fit Google’s requirements – especially if you’re looking to keep your top spot. The competition is fierce and you won’t be the only one investing in SEO to improve your rankings, so it’s always a good idea to focus on your niche and what your target audience really needs.

Neil is a student of a web design, a digital marketing enthusiast and a DIY hobbyist. His home is the whole world because he travels a lot. While you are reading this he is probably somewhere other than where he was yesterday.

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What Qualifies as a "Quality Blog Post"?

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While RankWatch is primarily dealing with Digital Marketing, we would love to have guest posts in and around the industry as well.